It is a sunny Saturday afternoon, but instead of following their peers to the cinema to watch the latest Hollywood blockbuster or to shop at the malls, a group of young people are studiously immersed learning to play a 3,000-year-old instrument the guqin.

It is a rare scene in China. Once the most regal of all Chinese instruments, the guqin, a seven-string, plucked zither, has fallen upon hard times that some fear could relegate it, like the once great harpsichord, to the musicology history bin.

"In my social circle, people think 'Oh my god, you can do this?'" says He Dong, a 36-year-old sculptor who began studying the guqin in 2001 to cultivate his artistic sense.

"Some people don't even know what the guqin is until I mention the scene in the movie 'Hero' where the actors use the guqin to fight."

The struggle of the guqin to regain status in China epitomizes the tension between the old and modern in a society that often has trouble recognizing its own culture as it prefers to embrace what is equated with economic advancement.

Some Chinese today would be more likely to recognize a Sony MP3 player than a guqin, the oldest string instrument in China.

The guqin forms the foundation of China's musical tradition, like the piano does to the West. For millennia, the long, wooden board-like instrument was considered a symbol of Chinese high culture and the most expressive of the essence of Chinese music.

The famous sage and philosopher Confucius was a master at it. Several emperors were accomplished players.

In imperial China, a well-educated scholar was expected to be skilled in four arts: The guqin, Chinese chess (commonly known as the game of go), calligraphy and painting. But changing tastes in music has accompanied China's rapid modernization, and traditional music has fallen by the wayside.

More people now prefer to listen to and play more modern Western, canto and mando pop tunes than traditional Chinese.

"It is a struggle to preserve traditional art forms, even something as sacred as the guqin," says Yang Qing, general secretary of the China Quqin Association.

Schools nowadays offer no classes in Chinese musical instruments. Most of China's concert halls are also devoted to Western orchestras.

The piano and violin have become regarded as higher status symbols.

China's most prestigious music school, the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, only has four to five students studying guqin, compared to 120 studying the piano.

Renewed interest

A growing number of Chinese, however, are rediscovering the calming, low resonating sounds of the guqin, considered a predecessor of the Japanese koto or Korean kayagum. Students come mainly from the middle classes. With good jobs and a nice home, they have time to pursue neglected Chinese arts.

"There is renewed interest in old culture. It's mainly due to people's livelihoods stabilizing," says Li Xiangting, China's best guqin player. "There are still many people who see Western things as superior because the West is more developed, but this will change as people rediscover the beauty of Chinese culture."

The fledgling association, of which Li is president, only began accepting students in 2000, holding the Saturday classes in central Beijing near the Forbidden City. It has seen the number of pupils steadily rise and the first nationwide guqin competition was held last year.

UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization) in 2003 proclaimed 28 masterpieces including China's ancient guqin music art as an "oral and intangible heritage of humanity."

Still, only an estimated 2,000 people can play the guqin in China, one of the oldest instruments in the world, and up to 10,000 are studying it, compared to millions of Chinese children learning to play the piano.

Talent at the piano can lead to a better life, including a career performing overseas, but the ability to play the guqin is considered an oddity. Today the best surviving players are graying haired men such as Li.

Despite renewed curiosity in the instrument, the tradition is still at risk of dying out. There are few people who can play it well and many of the musical scores are written in a way that are difficult for modern people to decipher.

"In China, we have many provinces which do not even have one person who can play the guqin," says Yang of the China Guqin Association. "We'll have a problem in the future of not having enough guqin teachers," he adds, bemoaning the lack of government and public support to preserve the dying arts.

But there is hope in yuppies like He, who pays 100 yuan (US$12) for an hour of lessons each week a quarter of a month's salary for many in China. He says he is converted for good.

Once a week, the sculptor scrubs his hands after work and heads to a small apartment turned into a guqin studio, where he says he is transformed by the guqin's harmonies, which help him block out noisy traffic outside and work stress.

"It's become a part of life," says He.

(China Daily June 22, 2005)